People like Us
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: Naruto-Gatsby AU. I am the son of some very wealthy people. Sadly, they're all dead now. After my brother's passing i returned to Konoha, the home of my youth, and there I met him... Uzumaki, and returned to the house of my fair cousin Hinata. Angry, half-in love, I left, when it became clear to me I could no longer thrive in this world Itachi and I had left behind.


In my younger, more vulnerable years, my older brother often said to me "You must not judge people, for some of them may not have had the privileges that you and I have." As everything else that my brother said, I took this to heart. I liked to think that I was as open minded a person as people came, and that was partially true, until I met Naruto.

In my life, in all the things that follow, everything will always come to the summer of my twenty seventh year, so let me begin there.

I am the son of some very wealthy people. Sadly they're all dead now. My brother and me left our family home very soon after that. We lived in all the capitals of the world, generally occupying ourselves with what rich heirs occupy themselves with. My brother wrote some, poetry and articles on the war that were generally well-received by the public. His health rapidly declined, at some point, the natural weak immune system our genes were cursed with completely crumbling, while we were in south, in the desert, I think, and soon we couldn't move around anymore. After he passed away, I returned to the place of my childhood – our home in Konoha. I felt that it would be prudent to bury him with the rest of our entire family. I alone attended his funeral, watching his heavy stone casket press against the niche where our older cousin Shisui, a war hero and victim, resided., with some distant ancient relatives and political allies of my dead father for company and color. I got drunk on my own, though, that night, and many nights after.

The place we had grown up in was an eyesore, after years upon years of neglect, but it was an impressive eyesore, combining traditional eastern style with the sweeping darkness of early gothica. It looked even more ominous and out of place compared to the house that now resided right beside it, a huge light airy mansion. That was Uzumaki's house, or, rather, as I didn't know Naruto at the time, it was a house that belonged to a nouveau riche of that name. It's bright windows and white marble, its garish cheerful enormity that clashed with all ideas of good taste seemed like a mockery to the mourning cloth that still hung in ragged lines, draped over my own home, and moved by the wind. It was early June. My brother was a week dead, the tuberculosis he had fended off for almost a year finally claiming his beautiful life from his body.

The flowers in the neglected garden were blooming, their heavy fragrance masking the air of death that surrounded the whole place. Summer was in full swing, and so, it seemed to me, were my neighbour's parties – loud, bright and noisy celebrations. My mother, in her day had been very fond of throwing parties and I thought them to be especially glamorous affairs, but even I, having filtered their generous proclivity though my childish loving son's eyes, had to admit that they paled as compared to the pyramids of champagne glasses, the uniformed orchestras that played modern music for women in dresses a notch too short to dance to. Sometimes, from the windows of my brother's bedroom, where I had taken to sleeping, I could see the sheer expanse of Naruto's garden where women in bright modern clothing talked to pseudo-intellectuals in ill-fitting tailored suits, and I could smell the sweetness of the catering and the thickness of the liquor. It occurred to me that my neighbor may not be an ordinary man at all. He was not just some newly enriched nobody who was trying to assert himself in a community where he didn't belong.

Maybe, in my lonely depression, I had become desperate for some color and noise in my life, maybe I wished, hopelessly, for this man to become a distraction. But I did not know him. I had never, once, been invited to his home.

Still, as I gazed through the window in the small hours of the night, sitting upon the windowsill, where my brother had sat, nursing a bruise here and there, a sprained wrist, or, on a memorable occasion, a few cracked ribs after arguments won with our father, and I looked upon Naruto's bright colorful garden, it became impossible for me to imagine that there had ever been anything else but loud music and glamorous people there. I began to take comfort in his parties. I began to feel kinship to him, through the brightness and color that he bestowed upon those people, but more than ever, I felt as though I were connected to him when the parties were over, and I could see the garden empty, stwen with the waste that parties leave often.

One night, when I had not taken my usual dose of valium to sleep, I was again, huddled by the window, clutching and pretending to read one of my brother's favorite books, but mostly just touching it where his beautiful hands had touched it, as I watched the people slowly leave. The huge white house was like an island of broken dreams in the middle of the garden, its lights dimming one by one. The personal skittered along the garden, to tidy it up, so the light of day would not see what had transpired. I thought then, that I saw him, Uzumaki, in the middle of the post-celebration frenzy, among his hired help. He bent over as if to pick something up, then shook his head, stood up again and for a long time looked at something across the river that I could not see.

Another thing worth noting happened that summer. Just a few weeks after I had settled myself back in my childhood home, a family that I had not expected, returned to me by some miracle. My cousin Hinata and the man she was married to, Inuzuka Kiba, had finally decided to grace Konoha with their presence. While I had never been short of money, and had never had to work, and probably never would, just drawing on the vast Uchiha fortunes accumulated though the years, even I was a little mortified that I had a man, in my generation and from my class, that could and would buy his very own team of trained big game hunting dogs, for the sake of breeding them.

Ever since our shared days at the academy, Inuzuka had spent his money in what was almost a matter of reproach. He had married my gentle cousin not long after I left the country. They had spent some years travelling, and were now returning, ready to take Konoha in a fashion not quite seen before. It did not take long for the rumor mill to make them aware of my presence. The white rectangle of creamy pair signed by Hinata's small gentle hand invited me to pay my respects.

And so a July afternoon found me in a boat crossing the river to visit those two friends and family that I scarcely knew at all.


End file.
